


My Mark on Your Skin

by silhouette (thiefless)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, First Kiss, First Time, Guilt, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Temporary Character Death, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:48:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22298089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thiefless/pseuds/silhouette
Summary: Tony wasn't sure what to think about the words,I just wanted to be like you, that were tattooed on his chest.Peter had gone through fifteen years of his life believing his soulmate hated him.
Relationships: Peter Parker/Tony Stark
Comments: 6
Kudos: 409





	My Mark on Your Skin

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! :) I'm back again with the ever-popular soulmate trope. 
> 
> CNTW because of Peter's age. Nothing happens until Peter's eighteen, but feelings are still there between them.
> 
> (Friendly reminder that in the real world, I would not want this type of relationship to manifest. This is only written for fiction purposes, and has no bearing on real life.)
> 
> That being said, hope you guys enjoy!

There was an idea – Plato knows this – about the creation of soulmates. In the beginning, every human was a part of another; a part of a whole. Male, female, androgynous. There was no discrimination against the sexes. 

According to Greek mythology, Zeus, fearing the power of humanity yet still hungry for iterations of eternal worship, sundered them, splitting their bodies in half like the division of atoms, so that each modified human would wonder the planet in solitude, craving its other half. 

In real life, however – the marks of a soulmate symbolised a declaration of love. The moment when two people recognise their respective importance to the other. For some, it was the first words they spoke. Other times, it was a confessional speech that their partner had tattooed onto their skin like a medallion. There had been notable case studies where people had spent their entire lives together, only to finally bring their marks to life as they neared death. 

But... in all that time, nobody held their mark to a standard of shame and regret and self-loathing like Tony did.

And nobody had a mark quite like Peter’s.

* * *

Tony wasn't sure what to think about the words, _I just wanted to be like you_ , that were tattooed on his chest. 

He knew what his mother thought of them, with her soft smiles and tender touches. “Someone will worship you one day,” she informed him with a gentle expression. “They’ll love you so much. You just have to be patient. Wait for them, and they’ll find you.”

Howard had a different view – one that he shared loudly and often within the confinements of their personal living quarters.

“You are the ideal to which your other half judges themselves,” he would say in a tone as cold as ice; Tony would half-think he ought to have caught hypothermia. Howard pointed at Tony’s chest. “Set a good one.”

He tried. In the beginning. He really, honestly did. 

Tony was fifteen, then seventeen, then twenty-one and somewhere along the way, the marks on his arm stopped being an indicator of the idea that he had a good soulmate out there, and instead became a topic of self-loathing. If the past had told him anything, it was that he wasn't the kind of guy that attracted the good things in life – no. Tony's _I just wanted to be like you_ was a bitter pill to swallow, and he did so with alcohol and drugs and sex, gargling it all down until his conscience stopped bothering him. 

(The shame never burnt as badly as when Tony was tortured by the Ten Rings, shrapnel embedded in his chest from one of his bullets. His soulmate's words – _I just wanted to be like you_ – and for once Tony feared just who he was cursed to be with.)

And then this plucky young kid from Queens, gifted powers from a goddamn arachnid, came swinging into life and threw out the instruction manual. Tony was flying blind, waiting for the ground to catch up with him.

He never expected to actually meet his soulmate, but destiny had other plans.

~

Peter had gone through fifteen years of his life believing that his soulmate hated him.

He wore long sleeves to hide his mark. He did have them out in the open, but then he couldn't stand the pitying looks his parents – and, later, his aunt and uncle – would shoot at his arm when they thought he wasn't looking, or the cruel taunts Flash would hurl at him. Rejection was branded onto his flesh, seared straight from the flames of his hell, so it was no wonder why everyone was understandably wary of him. 

Even his own soulmate would throw him out on his ass.

On his worst days, Peter couldn't formulate an adequate rebuttal. Who else had their declarations of love be a wish for betterment instead?

Answer: nobody.

Ned and MJ were the only ones who refused to define him by the blackened letters. His best friend's soulmate was a classmate of theirs – Betty Brant, although they hadn't formally acknowledged the other's presence just yet. 

“Let's drink to crappy soulmates!” Peter hollered incoherently, cheap beer sloshing out from the sides as he swung his cup around like a victory flag. Parties weren't usually his scene, but after the landslide decathlon victory they just won, he figured that he could suck it up for one night.

Okay, fine. It also helped keep his mind staunchly _away_ from the abnormalities that littered his arm. 

Ned frowned. MJ was nonplussed. Nevertheless, the plastic made a feeble chinking sound as they knocked cups before downing each of their shots in one. 

Well, Peter downed his in one. Ned took a single, solitary sip, and MJ just set hers down beside her, neither one willing to get intoxicated on a school night. Not that he blamed them. If he were in their shoes, Peter wouldn't either. But Spider-Man's activities were beginning to get noticed by the authorities, Happy still refused to answer any of his calls or texts after Germany, and the lies upon lies of deceit were becoming intensely smothering. 

What harm would one night off do? Just twelve hours where he didn't have to think about all that he said and did, and all that he _hadn't_ said or did. One night where the fate of the world didn't rest upon his shoulders.

Besides, he was newly fifteen. Getting shit-faced was practically a rite of passage. 

_And I wanted you to be better._

(Shoot. His thoughts weren't supposed to wander into uncharted territory. Getting drunk sucked.)

Nothing he ever did would be good enough for the one person he was destined to be tied to – so what was the point in even entertaining them?

* * *

_“I just– I just wanted to be like you.”_

_“And I wanted you to be better.”_

* * *

Peter loved Tony Stark from the second he came on the second-hand TV Uncle Ben owned and announced that he was shutting down the weapons division of Stark Industries, a scant few months before the inevitable revelation that he was Iron Man cropped up. Peter was born to love Tony Stark, was formed in the womb loving Tony Stark. 

It took until his lifelong hero entered his apartment, wading into his bedroom like it was a five-star hotel and complimenting Peter's inventions with not an ounce of cruelty or malice, that Peter finally entertained the notion that he was _in love_ with Tony Stark as well. 

Fighting alongside the man he loved long before his brain understood the word for it was an honour and a privilege, and it only cemented Peter's affirmation that _yes_ , this was the man he loved. 

To get nothing but radio silence in response was a harsh wake-up call. 

Not once did Peter hypothesise that _Tony_ was the person whose letters he bore. Perhaps if he had, he would have done the whole thing differently. Refused Iron Man when he came knocking at his door.

Nonetheless, the damage was done. Peter was head-over-heels, and Tony–

Tony was pretending nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.

~

To compare, Tony did not love Peter Parker from the second F.R.I.D.A.Y. filtered in the Spider-Man tapes. He was intrigued, sure, even a little impressed over the web fluid, and the squeaky-clean ethos the spider-kid adopted – but infatuated over a _teenager?_ Tony was far, far too old for such triviality. Plus, he was still smarting from his final break-up with Pepper, who seemingly wised up and left him for good. 

No. Love came much later. 

He could read Peter's realisation instantaneously, a similar bolt electrocuting him. Of all the people Tony presumed to be his soulmate – of all the people he speculated to want to _be_ him – Peter goddamn Parker was not one of them. The kid was too good to be sullied by the likes of him. 

Fate, as it happened, disagreed with his assessment. Not that it mattered one iota since Tony vehemently refused to acknowledge their correlative relationship. 

One thing you have to understand about Tony: well, he was a coward by trade. The ignorant war-profiteer who only tore his head from his ass when his life's work blew up in his face (literally). Of course he wasn't going to say anything. 

But the knowledge that somewhere printed on the kid's body was Tony's harsh rebuttal, his callous rejection, caused something inside him to ache. Tony knew that it fell on him to be the first one to bring it up in casual conversation, those words Tony threw at him: cruel and unjust, and nothing at all like what Peter Parker deserved. 

_He must have lived his life knowing that he would never measure up to his soulmate's ideal._ The realisation made Tony gag. He truly was not good enough to be anyone's soulmate, much less the most amazing person he'd ever known. 

Peter wasn't good enough for him. That was a fact. 

In the two years that followed their daunting realisation that fate had apparently conspired to place them together, Tony and Peter became closer despite his better judgement. Almost too close, you could say. Too close that Tony wanted–

Ah, but people like Tony didn't deserve _wants_. 

This was nothing more than a cruel jape from the universe he so valiantly tried to save. There was no way in hell that Tony's soulmate was a goddamn seventeen-year-old spider-kid – and no, if you had a baby face like that then the word _legal_ lost all semantic value. The guy was coming up on his graduation from _high school_ ; there was no way Peter deserved being tied to Tony for the rest of his life.

Besides, Tony was a master at deceiving people. He could do this. 

~

Spoiler alert: he did it.

* * *

_“Mr. Stark...? I don't feel so good.”_

Then:

_“And I am Iron Man.”_

* * *

Tony always imagined himself ruling over hell with a literal iron fist. He never accounted for the reality of his miraculous revival one singular year after the fact. 

Peter was seventeen when he died. That number had shifted to eighteen. Not at all decent or moral, but just enough of a change that it made the guilt loosen ever so slightly in his gut. 

Denial had been Tony's best friend before Titan – there was no way in hell he was going to make the same mistake twice.

~

There weren't many things that could startle Peter. 

The return of Tony Stark was, apparently, one of them. 

“I was a mess.” Tony paused; collected himself. Tony had arrived at Peter's new apartment, one that he had purchased with his own money. Tony's breathing was harsh and ragged; Peter could smell the alcohol that clung to the intonation of his syllables, and desperately wanted to lick the taste away from his soulmate's mouth. “During the– what're the kids calling it now, the Blip?”

Peter's head jerked like a mechanical robot. Funny. He would almost prefer to be controlled by Skynet right now. 

Tony sighed. “I was a mess,” he repeated again, no less than a mere exhalation of carbon dioxide and regret. “You died in my arms, and I was too much of a _fucking_ coward to tell you...”

Peter's heart stopped, lungs forcing the air through his parted mouth like a pressurised vacuum. 

“I would have gone to the grave without telling you,” Tony said, inching forward. He let out a rueful chuckle; discordant and painful. “In fact, I _did_ go to the grave without telling you. But I can't let you go to your grave without letting you know.”

His tongue darted forward to wet his lips. “Let me know what, sir?”

Tony jolted, imperceptible to the untrained eye, at the honorific. Victory was at hand. 

Iron Man inhaled sharply. “That I love you, kid. I loved you when you were gone, and I love you now you're back.”

Tears glistened in Peter's eyes. “I love you too, Tony.”

~

They fell into bed not too long after, exploring the others body with such intimate detail it was almost too personal go recall.

Tony soothed the sting of the words – _And I wanted you to be better_ – seared onto Peter's flesh with the flat of his tongue, tracing the letters with a softness that took his breath away. 

Peter eagerly copied his actions, settling down with his thighs gripping tight onto Tony's legs, eyes seeking out the declarative he knew was etched onto his soulmate's skin. 

Tony's own words were blotchy on his chest, just below his scarred sternum – _I just wanted to be like you._ The ink had smudged and faded over time, yet was blurred by tiny traces of what appeared to be forgotten tear streaks wiped away by shaky finger-marks. Peter's fingers ached to touch them, trembling as they made contact. He felt the taut muscles of Tony's toned abdomen contract under his hand, heard the choked whine die in Tony's throat. 

Peter let Tony take charge, called him _sir_ and bowed down to his power, delighting in Tony's pleasure at the appellation. 

Afterwards, Tony took Peter apart, bit by bit, until his throat was hoarse and rough from screaming his name. Tony followed suit, collapsing onto him with a rumbled exhalation of Peter's name. 

For this nanosecond, for this little sliver of time gifted to them on a silver platter, as they both drifted down from their collective peaks, bodies still in tandem, unwilling to part–

Peter and Tony's heart beat as one.

* * *


End file.
